“Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.” –G. K. Chesterton

Once I heard that Lament is the poetry of truth telling. Last week I posted something about the mudslide that took many lives in the garbage dump area, Zone 3, Guatemala City. As the week has gone by I took some time to think and reflect about what I wrote, and I have come to the conclusion that one of the ways of starting anew in the communities who suffered the loss of many people is to open a space for lament.

People say bad news travel fast. Some times they travel even faster. Yesterday afternoon I was in a meeting with my friends and colleagues Fito and Teddy. As we were exploring a couple ways of moving forward with a health prevention program in the garbage dump area in zone 3, Guatemala City, Fito received a phone call from his wife. Fito’s wife was asking him to call a good friend of Fito because she heard that something had happened inside the dump and that Fito’s friend was missing. Sadly, something did happen. A mud slide buried a lot of people alive. I say, a lot of people, because the truth of the matter is that we don’t know the exact number of people who died. Fito was finally able to communicate with his friend just to realize that Fito’s friend’s brother was the one who had died. Teddy and I sat in front of Fito, just listening to Fito’s conversation over the phone. We heard screaming coming from the other side of the phone call when Fito’s friend was crying and yelling unconsolably. “IT SWALLOWED HIM! THE DUMP SWALLOWED MY BROTHER!!” Continue reading →

Last week I was invited to participate in a consultation in Theological Formation for the Peace of the City. This event was hosted by City Seminary of New York, coordinated by INFEMIT, with the attendance of people from around the Globe. We took some time to write and share our ideas in regards of what theological formation needs to be today. We all agreed that theological formation is key to leadership development, and that’s why I decided I would share with you what I think the objectives of theological formation should be in my City, Guatemala City. Continue reading →

In the last few years I have had the opportunity to enter into a global conversation. I have sat around with leaders from different countries, and continents. This group of friends is what we call The Urban Training Collaborative, which is a group of training hubs in different cities around the world. As we sit together, around a table where nobody is greater than one another, we have come to ask one question. How do we engage our city in a way that brings transformation? At the beginning, the answer to this question didn’t come up as easy as we thought it would. It took us hours, months, even years of staying in conversation with each other to arrive to the conclusions we have found in the last few years. This process has helped us realize we have “three ways of doing.” Continue reading →

One of the things that used to frustrate me the most is the number of step-by-step How-to-be a good/great leader literature that circulates out there. And why is it frustrating? because I have never been able to find a step-by-step replicable leadership style, program, or process. This frustration, however, was what motivated me to embark on a journey through as much of the leadership taxonomy I could research. To my surprise, everything I found had to do with examples of great leaders from around the world who apparently had nothing in common. I read from John Maxwell, to Mohandas Ganhdi, to Nelson Mandela, to Steve Jobs, to Mother Teresa, to Bill Gates, and there was no apparent connection on what made them great leaders, or what made their leadership so influential.

Relational leadership is a relatively recent term in leadership literature. For that reason, I think it is important to take some time to explore not only the meaning of such a term, but also the implications of its understanding. The idea that I have found the most helpful is the one presented by Komives, Lucas, and McMahon in “The relational leadership model.” For the authors, leadership is more than a theory, it’s a philosophy on how we engage and relate with people to provoke change. Thereby, relational leadership becomes a framework that reflects how the organization’s or community’s purpose influences the ideas of being inclusive, empowering and ethical. In other words, relational leadership includes others by empowering them to use their gifts in order to bring change that benefits and transforms their community, organization, or environment for the common good.

In the last post I explored the power of mob violence, and the importance of desire as a way of understanding conflict. This time, I have another example of the power of violence that gets spread through a mob. In a little town called Tacaná, in Guatemala, a group of people accused a woman of witchcraft, and attributed her the different calamities that were happening in this little town. Again, a group of individuals started to imitate each other in rivalry and turned to this woman to satiate their thirst for blood. Once more, a woman was killed, and the tension of this small community relaxed.